


the moments we miss

by callmefairyofthesea



Series: just because it's temporary doesn't mean it's worth less [3]
Category: Teen Titans (Animated Series)
Genre: F/F, Friendship, Gen, Post Season 5, Raven is oblivious, Tara is back on the team because she deserves it, Tara is pining, Unrequited Love, but not really present in the story, the rest of the team is around - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-27
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-18 22:34:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29740893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callmefairyofthesea/pseuds/callmefairyofthesea
Summary: Newly reinstated on the team, still missing memories, Tara realizes she doesn’t know how it happened. Or how she missed it.Set in the same universe as "no man is an island."
Relationships: Raven/Tara Markov
Series: just because it's temporary doesn't mean it's worth less [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2185842





	the moments we miss

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place a month or two after the episode "Things Change." Also a few months after the short "into the ocean tides." I think Tara and Raven have a deliciously complicated dynamic, and if Tara started over with the slate wiped clean… her relationship with Raven might look something like this.

Tara doesn’t know how it happened.

How one second, she was jagged, torn raw with regret that wouldn’t stop engulfing her whole, fingers numb from fists and punches, nanotechnology baked so deep into her nerves that she lost herself weeks ago. How one second, she was finally seeing Slade in the light of the magma, and it was sharper, realer, more honest than she had seen him before, and there were too many voices scraped into hoarse whispers from yelling, and there were four red eyes hating her for something she didn’t know how to take back.

And the next second, she is laughing, leaned up against the cool damp safety bar that lines the steps of Mammoth Cave, lingering on the arc of Raven’s pale throat as it twists toward the stalactites and glimmers like a streak of quicksilver. The next second, she nudges their shoulders together, breathes in the air that is so much wetter than tunnels beneath volcanoes, and lets everything snap into perspective.

Tara doesn’t know it happened. Couldn’t list every step in between begrudging friendship to enemies to amnesiacs to this. Couldn’t say when it all tilted upright, or why right now, lungs tight with laughter from the tour guide’s puns, makes it so fucking obvious that she doesn’t know how she missed it.

“Tara,” Raven says, dark hair falling around her cheeks like the soft drape of shadows.

And looking up, Tara realizes that they are falling behind the group, that Raven has one hand pulling at her wrist, that the silver holo-ring glints against human-colored skin.

“Sorry,” she says, still stuck on the arc of Raven’s throat, and she doesn’t know it happened. After years of not remembering, wandering high school grounds with her bare feet rooted into the earth and ignoring the press of memories beneath her eyelids. Years of escaping the hell that he walked her into, of living all the small moments that she missed in Markovia, in deserts, in superhero teams that needed her to never misstep. Years not thinking about green boys seeing straight through her. Years of forgetting the broken relationships she left behind. Red eyes and mud fights.

“You okay?” Raven asks as they trail behind the tourists, and Tara inhales the faint perfume of magic that suddenly sparks between their connected wrists. All smoke and singed herbs, and sometimes it reminds her of the volcano erupting. The acrid smell of everything burning. But the only time she had bothered to ask, in that first week when Tara still didn’t remember her name, Raven said all demon magic tasted like hell. That hers was nothing special.

“Fine. Just remembered something.” She shakes off Raven’s curious stare, shakes her hand away from the empathy, and jogs to catch up to the tour guide. She listens to the history of this cave, traces the shape of it winding miles and miles away, the yellow blueprints her powers have emblazoned across her brain.

Tara doesn’t know how it happened.

How one second, Raven was a stranger on her foster parents’ doorstep, wearing an oversized leather jacket and jeans, hair swept back in a beanie. How one second, Raven was distant, laying out the terms of her proposed agreement, black energy sizzling in the seams of her cracked knuckles and nailbeds. How Raven turned soft. Her lips pressed tight together, her hands tender on Tara’s temples after they tumbled from her meditation mirror, and Tara was blinking back saltwater, choking over her own lungs, wishing she hadn’t asked to remember.

“Gift shop,” says Raven, tapping Tara’s bare shoulder as though it doesn’t send shivers down her spine. As though she doesn’t feel the flood of red flushed cheeks and fluttered heartbeats and something softer than the codependency she had with Slade. With Gar. Something more even and stable.

“Ooooo, might complete our rock collection,” Tara says, maybe a little too fiercely, wrapping her arms over her chest. “I swear these cheap-ass bags are going to run us broke before we find garnet.”

As Raven moves toward the sandbags, re-shouldering her hiking backpack, Tara wonders when it happened. When not remembering turned into resurged trauma. Too close to fumbling apart, too close to pulling up unresolved anger. If it hadn’t been for Gar, his long, angular face pinched with pain, Tara doesn’t think they would be here.

She thinks they are too similar, sometimes. That they are tectonic plates overlapped, but Tara is so much quicker to shudder forward.

“This would be faster if you used your powers,” says Raven, leaning over the stream of water and sifter, emptying their bag of sand and rocks into the warm splash of early summer.

“It’s good to do it the normal way. Makes it mean more, you know?”

As Tara dips her hands into the sifter, ignoring their skin brushing again, she feels Raven staring at her. It sends goose bumps up her arms.

She doesn’t know how it happened this fast. How one second, Raven was tensed on the other side of the rooftop, her skin paled beneath the May dawn, waiting for Gar to mediate. How Tara was still loose with memories, and she just wanted to stop feeling so goddamn uneasy every time they were alone together. How one second, she thought maybe Gar was a safer option. A healthier one.

“Okay,” says Raven, leaning into the sifter, into the space behind Tara’s neck, her fingers running through the sand to pick out pyrite, malachite, rose quartz. “The normal way, then.”

Tara drops them into a velvet bag, liking the weight of them. “Squire Boons Cavern isn’t that far away. We could probably get another tour in this afternoon. If you’ve got enough juice left.”

“We should check with Dick.”

“We can’t just screw off for the rest of the day?”

Raven is quiet. Not one to overtalk, not like Gar, but Tara thinks she prefers this. The way her face flickers with amusement. The way her lips curl into a half-smile, even though her laughter is silent in the exhale of her shoulders.

“Vic’s working with the kids today on their powers. Gar’s off on a date,” Tara says, feeling glad almost. That he disappeared into the ocean in love before she could try and reclaim the relationship that she broke the most.

“Dick doesn’t like us being so far away. Especially when Kori is...” Raven looks discreetly around them. The middle-aged couple with two kids fighting over the sifter. The teenager rolling amethyst over his palm. “Out of town.”

“You’re boring. So responsible.”

“Hmm,” Raven hums, and it’s almost a laugh.

“Fine. Next week?”

“Next week,” says Raven, and Tara doesn’t know how it happened.

How they are able to rebuild themselves in caves that should taste like memories better forgotten. How Tara was able to say sorry, back in April, sitting on the porch of her fosters’ house and watching fireflies dance across Raven’s bare shoulder. Short legs and shorts and the shine of sweat from California heat. How Raven softened with each meditation, with each old memory recovered, her anger melting with the late spring sun.

“Why are you helping me?” Tara had asked, two short months ago, fresh tears from visions of the slow churn of mud and hatred and two tectonic plates finally colliding.

“For Beast Boy,” Raven had said, even though that had stopped feeling true weeks ago. Even though there was the skew of a lie in it. Even though it only started out that way. “He misses you.”

“But you haven’t told him yet. About what we’re doing.”

“I will. Soon.”

And Tara didn’t mind, because she liked avoiding the apology that she owed him, and she liked seeing Raven in the yellow light of the porch’s singular bulb. Liked knowing where they stood with each other, liked knowing that Raven helping her was not because she cared. Not about her.

“Ready to go home?” Raven asks, and Tara jerks back to Mammoth Cave, the gift shop, the weight of hot noon and humidity.

“Yup!” As Tara wraps their elbows together, as Raven leads her into the bathroom where they can teleport unseen, she tries not to fixate on how it happened. How one second, they were shaking each other apart, shattering into fractures and earthquakes, two broken people who blamed each other for the bad decisions that anger makes.

And how the next second, she doesn’t want to let go. How the next second she is fixated on the flutter of Raven’s hand pulling them through interdimensional blackness. How the next second she thinks this is the healthiest relationship she’s ever had. How the next second she promises to herself to confess. She doesn’t know how it happened, doesn’t know how she missed it, but she knows what to do with it.

Knows she wants to learn how to love slow and gentle after Slade, after Gar.

Wants to learn how to love someone and mean it.

Except when she clears her throat, shaking off the nausea of teleporting and pointing toward the beach and the rocks and feeling around the edges of her confession, Raven shakes her head. She has paperwork for JCU, she says, for the fall, and Tara is left with the limp words in her mouth. She watches the moment go, wondering how she missed it, how she can get it back.

**Author's Note:**

> Like I mentioned in "no man is an island," this relationship is largely unrequited (i.e., Raven is a little too oblivious to realize what’s happening). They never quite get the timing right. Raven’s POV is explored in *the kind of real that feels like home.*


End file.
